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In my guest lecture this week at UMass Amherst’s “Reading Audre Lorde” class taught by Elizabeth W. Williams, we discussed how digital humanities can share and produce public knowledge. To that end, the students in that course are producing their own timeline of This Bridge Called My Back, eds. Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherrie Moraga. We used the Knight Foundation’s great tool, JSTiimeline, which I then embedded below. I use the same tool for teaching my American Conflicts & Cultures in the 1980s course at Trinity. Enjoy!

Who made this happen? (Queen) Megan Springate is a kind, brilliant scholar who works on queer archaeology (that’s a thing! and it’s such a cool thing!) and she truly led the effort to bring this to life. There are dozens of authors involved. And what was my role? Besides serving as a peer reviewer for many, many essays, my own essay, “LGBTQ Spaces and Places,” is meant to be a really wide-ranging piece that allows those unfamiliar with LGBTQ geographies and pushing thinking beyond the notion that all “gay” people live and/or hang out in gay neighborhoods in cities, and just adoreeee bars. Amen. I account for the …

2016. Gieseking, J. Crossing Over into Territories of the Body: Urban Territories, Borders, and Lesbian-Queer Bodies in New York City. Area 48(3): 262-270. doi: 10.1111/area.12147.

48 (3): 262–70.

A year and two weeks ago, I posted the text of “Crossing Over into Territories of the Body: Urban Territories, Borders, and Lesbian-Queer Bodies in New York City” — which is now published in print! Here’s the citation and abstract:

Gieseking, Jen Jack. 2016. “Crossing Over into Neighbourhoods of the Body: Urban Territories, Borders and Lesbian-Queer Bodies in New York City.” Area 48 (3): 262–270. doi:10.1111/area.12147.

The geopolitical focus on territory as a fixed and cohesive nation-state simultaneously conceals the ways territories form and are operationalized at other scales. At the same time, the fleeting ability of minority bodies to make and retain cohesive, property-owned territories overlooks the limited agency that marginalized groups possess while they continually reproduce social territories as they …

Trinity College Queer America students visiting the Christopher Street Piers in New York City. CC BY-NC Jack Gieseking 2016.

This spring I taught two incredibly exciting courses. The senior seminar, Queer America, was comprised of a small group of students, primarily from our American Studies program. This is my second senior seminar at Trinity College and my first full-semester lgbtq studies course. Of course, the latter is the more shocking of these components: all of this queering I’ve been up to and I’m only just achieving this beautiful moment. I taught Queer(ing) New York with the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies with their Seminar in the Series course in 2013.

The course was framed around the following questions: What is queer about America? What can be and has been queered about America? What, if anything, is not queer about America?

I am honored to share that insights from my research were heard around the world for two minutes on August 23rd, 2016, in the BBC World Services “Beyond Binary” documentary. If you care to listen me especially, I am a minute 10. You can hear me speak about my new research on trans use of Tumblr. For about two years, I’ve been collecting data on the use of the #ftm hashtag and, for a shorter time, #mtf hashtag on Tumblr. I came upon the world of trans Tumblr, as I call it, in 2010 when I was choosing my own new name. I found a tightly-knit network of trans people who are otherwise unanchored through their geographic diaspora. You can click here to read more about that research project.

For about two years, I’ve been collecting data on the use of the #ftm hashtag and, for a shorter time, #mtf hashtag on Tumblr. These oft used trans hashtags, standing for female-to-male and male-to-female respectively, drew my attention as I was coming into my own trans identity. I came upon the world of trans Tumblr, as I call it, in 2010 when I was choosing my own new name. I found a tightly-knit network of trans people who are otherwise unanchored through their geographic diaspora. They were mostly very young, publicly sharing and connecting about the everyday violence and life milestones, accomplishments and losses that fuel life in general and trans life specifically. I was particularly struck by the small number of voices that dominated the conversation, as well as the suicide notes that would float to the surface and the resounding and instant response of those around them …

The American Association of Geographers and Sexuality & Space Pre-Conference meetings took place in San Francisco last week. I’ve been back in Hartford a week and still feel like I’m getting my sea legs back after six days of conferencing. The Sexuality & Space Pre-Conference served as a great kick-off for the week and allowed to catch up with or connect to geographers of sexualities on their research-in-process. I reflect on the great papers and ideas I heard throughout the week and, most importantly, the segregation and diversity of the meeting, and how we must come together even further to create truly rigorous and diverse scholarship.

I’m in NYC again, walking around among the places where it seems everyone I knew over the last 16 years in this city used to be able to afford to live. What a perfect frame of loss and longing, transition and possibility in which to speak as part of the weekend long events on the Eulogy for the Dyke Bar (EFTDB) at PULSE today. EFTDB is an installation by artist and queer Macon Reed: afully-immersive structure that revisits the legacies and physical spaces of dyke bars, an increasingly rare component of the contemporary queer cultural landscape. Made of simple materials and seductively saturated colors, Reed’s hand-made installation includes a full bar, pool table, jukebox, and wall-to-wall wood paneling.

As I just wrote on the Gender & Geography Bibliography (GGB) website, during Geography Awareness Week in mid-November 2015, over 49 individuals and groups participated in the Gender & Geography Bibliography Hackathon! Over a 1,000 new entries–many of them sorely missing books, book chapters, and articles, a large number of which are blissfully not in English–now fill the GGB. Thank you to all who participated and cheered us on!

For those of you who still want to take part in the Hackathon, follow these instructions which explain in more detail how to head to our group at https://www.zotero.org/groups/gendergeog/ and request to join and Jack Gieseking (lead admin) will get a note to add you. From there, you and perhaps your friends–perhaps this is the new wild idea for wine night amongst the feminist dorks among us?? how fantastic–and follow the directions in previous posts. Email jack DOT gieseking …

I am delighted to share that the Gender & Geography Bibliography Hackathon will take place November 15th-21st, 2015. A hackathon is a time when a group of people come together to work on a digital project, usually by coding and creating content for an app or website. Skills and time involved are minimal. The outcome is a profound source of public knowledge across fields, as well as training in the citation management software, Zotero.

We are eagerly seeking faculty, students, staff, & citizens who want to take part any time and anywhere during the week of 11/15 to add to and edit the now 3,000+ large online, citation database of feminist geographic sources. We are particularly keen to have folks contribute books, book chapters, and multimedia citations from across disciplines, and we are extremely eager for contributions of non-English materials. Folks can work on their own or form their …

I’m over the moon that 1) I do not have the flu as I did last February when I had to cancel this talk, and 2) I finally get to give this talk at my alma mater with the brilliant, wonderful people at the Futures Initiative. It will be great to share my thoughts on selecting the right tool to fit the right public humanities project, particularly in regards to multiple layers of data analysis and collaboration in my Queer Public Archives project. The detailed abstract is below.

I am delighted to share that the Gender & Geography Bibliography Hackathon (GGBH) will take place from November 15th through the 21st, 2015. My own role in this project has involved most of the conceptualization and leadership, especially with the fabulous Laura Shillington of John Abbott College, so that this means so much to see it come to life!

A hackathon is a time when a group of people come together to work on a digital project together, usually by coding and creating content for an app or website. Skills and time involved are minimal and the outcome is a profound source of public knowledge for our various fields, as well as useful training in the citation management software, Zotero, to use our Zotero group (#71378).

We are eagerly seeking faculty, students, and staff who want to take part any time and anywhere during that week in adding to

Many thanks to the ridiculously smart and cool Nicole Pasulka for including my work in her Vice piece from August of 2015, “The History of Lesbian Bars.” I’ll have more coming out about lesbian bars in my next collected book chapter and, of course, they’ll be a key element in the book. Which I write every morning. Finally.

In the last month while moving to Hartford and getting settled in my new office at Trinity, I am happy to share that I joined the founding Board of Directors of the Rainbow Heritage Network (RHN). RHN is a national organization for the recognition and preservation of LGBTQ+ sites, history, and heritage. While always one for conspiring with archivists, librarians, historians, and their various home turfs, my collaboration with preservationists and archaeologists is a new endeavor that emerged from my roll in the LGBTQ Monuments Advisory Council of Scholars of the US National Parks Service. I am particularly keen in observing and helping to support the truly wide-ranging and radical representations of LGBTQQTSTSIA life that exist within the US and in relation to the US. I am also devoted to working with the RHN to think about our preservation efforts play a roll in the gentrification and financialization of …

My short reflection piece, “Urban Margins on the Move: Rethinking LGBTQ Inclusion by Queering the Place of the Gayborhood,” is now out in the Berlin Blätter with a focus on the shifting relationships between the center and margin, both material and metaphorical. I address this idea through the lens of LGBTQ neighborhoods, gentrification, and the work of feminist theorist bell hooks. The full text of the piece, as it is so short, is pasted below. Enjoy!

Queer theory’s embrace of instability paints stabilizing practices as normalizing and unjust. Rather than upholding a stance of opposition by championing instability alone, what can be gleaned for queer theory by examining the tension of the in/stability dialectic? This essay reflects on the author’s own embodied experience as researcher within …

I am delighted to share that I am Assistant Professor of Public Humanities in the American Studies Program at Trinity College as of yesterday. Hurrah! I will be blogging soon about how I imagine and enact public humanities in my research, and how I frame it as part of my teaching. I applied for an received a competitive Community Learning Initiative grant to support my development of “The Digital Image of the City” course at Trinity with a focus on Hartford. I will also be teaching “Conflicts & Cultures American Society: the 1980s” through the lens of gender and sexuality in that period, from the Barnard conference to AIDS, from Reagan’s cowboy past to the neutered but vibrant Saturday morning cartoon characters. I am honored and excited to be a part of the Trinity faculty and …

Although I add readings to my Gender, Sexuality, and Space Reading List about every six months, it’s been a few years since I did a detailed review to include any and all possible cites. The list has been extended by about 200 sources as a result!

The Gender, Sexuality, and Space Reading List builds primarily from my experience as a geographer and an environmental psychologist. I welcome colleagues and visitors to recommend other works in the field below in any format (text, film, art, music, performance, etc.). This page is updated about twice a year with new literature.

In the spring of 2013, I taught Queer(ing) New York as a Seminar in the City course with the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The focus of the course was as follows: While lgbtq studies has begun to extend itself to look at rural and other non-urban environments, much of the urban still remains to be accounted for, particularly difference within the city. To truly account for our difference, we must queer the city in the way it normalizes groups and spaces, and New York City is the exciting urban environment to begin within. In this Seminar in the City, we will read work that challenges and queers the normalized histories and spaces of lgbtq life. How can we queer the neighborhood, bar, streets, and bodies within it to tell stories of difference?

I am blissfully attending and participating in the Feminist Social Justice Conference at San Diego State University, a Workshop on Participatory and Feminist Research Methods to give the talk “Personal/Political/Feminist Maps: Reflections on Spatial Methods for Action Research.” The abstract and slides are below — I expect those who will find them most helpful are dealing with how to work with spatial methods and layering different data types and sorts in order to place them into conversation. I especially highlight mental mapping in conversation with the GIS platforms QGIS and Mapbox, with helpful hints on all as to how to move forward using the methods and analytics in your own research. One addition: my own 2013 paper on the methods and analytic techniques for mental mapping can be found here.

In The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau writes that “What the map cuts up, the story cuts …